Paris 2024 Paralympic Games: origin, rules, classification… Understand everything about the competition

Les Jeux Paralympiques de Paris débutent ce mercredi 28 août. XinHua – Li Ying

The Paralympic Games start this Wednesday, August 28 and end on September 8. The opportunity to learn everything about a unique event.

Origins

A little history. The modern Olympic Games were born in 1896. The Paralympics, 64 years later, in 1960, in Rome. At the time, only 400 athletes, all in wheelchairs, from 23 countries participated. It was not until 1976 that amputees or visually impaired athletes were included in the competition.

The creation of the Paralympics has its origins in the Stoke Mandeville Games (a village north of London), an event organized in 1948 bringing together veterans of the Second World War. The idea came from Dr Sir Ludwig Guttmann, a physician in charge of the spinal cord injury unit at a hospital in Stoke Mandeville.

Who can do the Paralympics ?

Ten types of disabilities are accepted at the Paralympics, divided into three broad categories: physical, visual and cognitive. Each athlete is assessed in advance by specialists, to "determine" disability and its degree.

Three disciplines are open to athletes with an intellectual disability: para-athletics, para-swimming and para-table tennis.

Classifications

This is one of the key words of parasport. Each athlete, according to the characteristics of his disability and the way in which it affects his sporting practice, is classified in a disability category. The goal: to allow fairness in each discipline for competitions.

The classification system follows a common logic with 2 components:

Letter: It is composed of one or 2 letters that refer to the sport, named in English.

Example S for Swimming, 2 different letters in Para athletics, T for Track (= « track » for runners) and F for Field (« ground » for throwers) and finally another example PR for Para Rowing.

Number: The 2nd component of the classification is the number associated with these letters. The higher the number, the lighter the handicap and vice versa.

And each discipline has its own classifications.

For example, para-athletics has six categories:

11 to 13 : visual impairment 20 : mental impairment 31 to 38 : cerebral palsy impairment 40 to 47 : people of short stature, upper limb amputation or similar, similar lower limb amputation. T 51 to 54 : Wheelchair races F51 to 58 : Wheelchair throwing events

Arnaud Assoumani from Montpellier, 38 years old and a long jump specialist, competes in the T47 category. He does athletics (T = track, on the track), has an upper left limb amputee and his disability is considered weaker than others (47).

The French delegation aims for 20 gold medals

The French delegation hopes to win around twenty gold medals, double what it won in Tokyo (11).

Some figures

22 sports are on the Paralympic Games programme. 549 events in total. 4,400 athletes are competing. Up to 25,000 police officers and gendarmes as well as 10,000 private security agents will be mobilised. Nearly 200,000 tickets have been allocated to schools as the school year starts on 2 September. Located in Seine-Saint-Denis, the Olympic Village has become a Paralympic Village. It will host up to 9,000 people during the competition.

“Agitos”, the Paralympic logos

Three waves representing the Paralympic Games. OLYMPIC GAMES

From the Latin "Agito" or "I move", they represent the small red, blue and green crescents that symbolize the Paralympic Games.